The Inheritances Game (Jameson Hawthorne)

The Woods

"The paparazzi is loving this" I muttered, staring at the headlines splashed across every news site. The situation was worse than I had anticipated.

Hawthorne Heiress Keeping Secrets.

What Does Avery Grambs Know?

"Do you think she's lying?" Jameson was pacing.

"Why would she be working with us if she knew why he chose her?" I asked closing the laptop. 

He didn't stop pacing. "I think I solved the clue about my middle name, Winchester the woods, the bridge."

I stood up and walked over to him making him look at me. "Go talk to Avery and bring her to the bridge I will meet you there once I change into something a bit better suited." He nodded giving me one last glance before leaving the room.

Avery's Pov

Thump. Thump. Thump.

My head shot up at the noise, and I slammed my laptop closed. The last thing I wanted was anyone knowing what I'd just looked up.

Thump.

This time, I did more than just register the sound. I flipped my bedside lamp on, swung my feet to the floor, and walked toward it. By the time I ended up at the fireplace, I was fairly certain who was on the other side.

"Do you ever use doors?" I asked Jameson, once I'd utilized the candlestick to open the passage. Jameson cocked an eyebrow and cocked his head. "Do you want me to use the door?"

"I saw your press conference."

"It wasn't so much a press conference as a very bad idea," I admitted wryly.

"Have I ever told you," Jameson murmured, staring at me in a way that had to be intentional, "that I'm a sucker for bad ideas?" When he'd shown up here, I'd felt like I'd summoned him by searching for Emily's name, but now I saw this midnight visit for exactly what it was.

"What do you want, Jameson?"

"You lied to the press." Jameson didn't look away. He didn't blink, and neither did I. "What you told them... it was a lie, wasn't it?"

"Of course, it was." If I'd known why Tobias Hawthorne left me his fortune, I wouldn't have been working side by side with Jameson to figure it out. I wouldn't have lost my breath when I'd seen that map at the foundation.

"It's hard to tell with you sometimes," Jameson commented. "You're not exactly an open book."

"Our thrill ride last night paid off," Jameson told me. "Getting out of my own head let me look at the puzzle with new eyes. Ask me what I figured out about our middle names."

"I don't have to," I told him. "I solved it, too. Blackwood. Westbrook. Davenport. Winchester. They're not just names. They're places—or at least, the first two are. The Black Wood. The West Brook."

"I'm not sure about the other two yet, but..."

"But..." Jameson's lips curved upward, his teeth flashing.

"Feel like a walk?" I found myself saying.

"The Black Wood is enormous. Finding anything there will be impossible if we don't know what we're looking for." Jameson said. "The brook is easier. It runs most of the length of the property, but if I know my grandfather, we're not looking for something in the water. We're looking for something on—or under—the bridge."

"What bridge?" I asked. I caught sight of movement out of the corner of my eye. Oren. He stayed in the shadows, but he was there.

"The bridge," Jameson replied, "where my grandfather proposed to my grandmother. It's near Wayback Cottage. Back in the day, that was all my grandfather owned. As his empire grew, he bought up the surrounding land. He built the House but always kept up the cottage."